Hi!
Thanks for opening this email / reading this post.
March Mondays are even Mondayer, but let’s get after “it” anyway.
Baseball has been waning in popularity for years now, but I think they’ve found a little something to bring the girls and gays back to the ball field (hehe).
The Irish rap group Kneecap pulled out of their previously planned performance at South by Southwest, after learning the festival is being sponsored by the US Army, which started a wave of over 80 artists canceling their appearances. Texas Gov. Greg Abbott said, “don’t come back,” and after crowd reactions like this to the bonkers military propaganda all over the festival this year, I don’t think the Austin Airbnb industrial complex will ever recover (nice).
Everything in New Orleans is more fun, even the rats.
Sharing two good mixtapes (Scottie Barnes and Jockic, respectively) before Nancy Pelosi bans of one of the only things I like.
I know our collective appetite for rich white women chronicling their neuroses is pretty dang low (more on that later), but I really appreciate this Lauren Oyler essay for introducing me to the term “Americanitis,” and making me feel momentarily superior to a far better writer, for simply going to therapy without putting up a fight.
Tunes to start the week with:
I made a little spingtime playlist. It’s easy breezy, something joyful to celebrate the sun with.
And circling back to “rich white women chronicling their neuroses,” I felt compelled to write a short essay a few days ago, and I hope you enjoy it.
My Personal (Essay) Hell
A few Mondays ago, I woke up with the thought, “if I send my newsletter and someone unsubscribes, I will blow up the moon.” I’ve been writing this email, on and off, since 2017, and the notion of being SEEN is still one I struggle with. I know I’m forwarding links and memes, but the vacuum of feedback and potential for someone to communicate, “I don’t care,” (no matter how subtly or unintentionally) still makes me SICK.
In the beginning, I wrote a little more about myself, mostly because I was working through some tough shit and thought maybe others were too. Although it was centered on me, and my grief, it felt somewhat communal to express my sadness this way. Since then, my work has been more focused on poetry, album reviews, and a novel that I don’t want to finish because then I’d have to start another. All projects at a safe distance from my own story. My interest in writing about my own life and experience and feelings began to feel kind of…gauche? Uninspired? Self-obsessed?
I've been thinking about this instinct a lot more after reading this piece on the culture of “girl blogs,” by Terry Nguyen. I’ve never had a ton of respect for the “personal essay” genre. At best, it feels like a chance to gawk at others, someone making worse choices than I do, but with more resources, fame, and alleged common sense. But, for a long time, especially through the heyday of Buzzfeed, HuffPo or Jezebel, it became obvious that this was the path to success. Memoirs rule the bestseller charts, even ones about unremarkable, unfamous people. For every one rigorous, critical book review, there are ten interviews where the author either details a creative process identical to the morning routine of a Product Manager at Google, or their childhood spent in abject poverty, haunted by abuse - so much personal context! Most writers I admire today talk about themselves constantly. Some do it beautifully, and I look forward to reading their words, as they weave their own world into the larger one, combining the universal and personal with a unique eye. But generally, this work has the gravitas and integrity of a celebrity profile in a People magazine.
All that being said, the popularity of the personal essay makes perfect sense to me. Like, I watch so much Bravo. Gossip delivered by the primary source is rare and special - as a desperately nosy person, I fully comprehend the urge to hear it! Similar to the front-facing confessional videos all over my TikTok For You page, unabashed sharing has now infiltrated most forms of text, from an album review mostly about the critic’s first time seeing the band live, to a food blog that ends up chronicling the messiest divorce Wisconsin has seen in over 30 years. For us to be interested in others, they need to get our attention. And with little to no regard for art, especially the written kind, how are we supposed to ask someone to read our stuff without the promise of being shocked, or at least a little gagged?
There’s also the idea of “branding,” an ugly phrase that brings to mind charred calf flesh, where we are no longer people in a community, but a product in an inventory. You must be aware of your brand, or rather, how you are selling yourself. Even when I was working in HR at a chemical manufacturer, I was lectured by “brand experts” and “professional coaches” on how to most quickly and charmingly communicate my unique skill set to a future employer, despite the role’s very concrete requirements. Authors now start social media accounts for books they haven’t finished yet, luring in consumers with the idea that if you like me as a person (or at least, as the kind of person I am pretending to be after a series of methodical and commercial calculations) then you will also like my work. Of course this is flawed logic - imagine how disastrously alienating a Joan Didion DIML would be.
I’m not trying to say writing about yourself is a new trend blossoming in the post-capitalist hellscape. The desire to talk about yourself is ancient. Jesus did it all the time. It’s a way of being certain people will see you how you want to be seen: victim, hero, ally, unwilling participant, whatever. That whichever stories you reveal paint your portrait the most clearly. But at the same time, it’s a shocking act of vulnerability. Like letting a stranger scroll through your texts, any piece of context left out could turn into a damning indictment. Oh, Liz is sad her mom is dead? Well does she know how many moms have died of inadequate postpartum care in the US? Emily Gould is unhappy in her marriage? Does she know how many women are in abusive relationships they can’t leave because of their lack of financial independence?
But why did I want to blow up the moon? The simple answer is PMDD, a hormonal imbalance of sorts. It’s a condition the medical community isn’t very curious to figure out; so, I’m left connecting the dots on my own, via Reddit message boards and peer-reviewed papers light-years above my science education. It’s something that apparently 1 in 12 people who menstruate have, sometimes without knowing it, because of how little it’s studied or even talked about. For me, it means 10-ish days a month with intense cramping and mood swings that would shock Bette Davis. I feel sleepy all the time, unless I’m surging with enough energy to punch through a redwood. And the digestive situation is simply fucked.
It is unfair, but it’s also fine. It won’t literally kill me. I’m also lucky that I have a career and lifestyle that gives me space to be in pain or feel crazy, traditionally two of the most important qualifications for writing. But my suffering is still real, and no matter how good or rich or white I am, it exists. My fear in writing about it, though, is a “reaction” from my “audience” that doesn’t have anything to do with my illness, but rather about my lack of perspective (the same one I have reading about Emily Gould’s marriage). And now, I’m back in the same place as the legions of personal essayists I’m looking down my nose at - struggling to control the narrative of my own life.
So, I thought I’d loosen my grasp on my “image” a little, and give some context about my life, but not all of it. It does seem insane to tell people I don’t know in real life about my very bad periods. Even though there is a genocide going on. And even though I have “seeing a dentist twice a year” money. Because my suffering will never negate someone else’s suffering, but solidarity is something that can help ease the pain. And even though the world is filled with problems so much larger than mine, maybe someone else with a small monkey on their back will read about my monkey and feel “seen.”
xx
i'm also terrified of being seen and don't know when it gets easier lol 🙃
xx